Iodine deficiency wrecked my life.

How did this happen?

No, I didn't live in a Third World Country where iodine deficiency is the leading cause of mental retardation. I grew up in New Jersey eating plenty of seafood and vegetables sprinkled with iodized salt. Still, for years I endured daily headaches and bouts of brain fog so bad that I lost my driver's license for speeding through stop signs without being aware. I slept so much my family called me Rip Van Winkle. Eventually I could no longer drag myself to work even with caffeine and Darvocet, a prescription painkiller.

I moved from teaching college full time to working as a journalist part time. To make things worse, pounds began to pad my middle. What was wrong with me? At least fifty doctors reviewed my case and ran tests. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, adrenal exhaustion, epilepsy, ovarian cysts, TMJ, candida, and multiple chemical sensitivities. They prescribed remedies but nothing worked. Did I have a disorder? A disease? And how did I finally land on iodine deficiency — the correct culprit?

The last doctor on my medical mystery tour shrugged. "There are things worse than brain fog."

Turned out he was right. I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.

Through what sounded like a metal tunnel, I heard these word: "After surgery you need to see an oncologist for chemotherapy and a doctor who will perform radiation."

The cacophony of noise town centres could trigger heart problems, a new study suggests, after scientists found that fluctuating sounds on busy high streets disturb normal cardiac rhythms.

Researchers from Nottingham Trent University found that constant changes in noise - even at low levels - had an immediate and disruptive effect on the patterns of participants' normal heart rates.

The team says their findings add to a growing body of research which shows how our everyday surroundings could have wider implications for long-term health.

For the study, shoppers were asked to wear mobile body sensors to monitor their heart rates as they moved about Nottingham city centre for 45 minutes.

"We found that rapid changes in noise resulted in rapid disturbance to the normal rhythm of participants' hearts," said researcher Dr Eiman Kanjo of Nottingham Trent's School of Science and Technology.

"If this pattern is repeated regularly then there is a danger it might lead to cardiovascular problems."

New bone regeneration technology that successfully implanted a bone in a dog's leg could pave the way for a revolutionary treatment that would see human bone implants generated by a 3D printer.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow in Scotland successfully saved a dog's leg from amputation by using medical technology funded by the landmine charity, Find A Better Way.‌

The dog, Eva, broke her leg during a car accident and was close to needing an amputation when her vet contacted the synthetic bone research project.

Although patient trials were not due to start for a few more years, the researchers agreed to treat Eva using a combination of a naturally-occurring protein called BMP-2, combined with PEA, a common household ingredient found in paint and nail polish.

While BMP-2 is recognized as effective for stimulating the growth of bone tissue, scientists have had difficulty containing it in the relevant area.

A new documentary examines the revolutionary methods of The Divided Mind author John E. Sarno.

John E. Sarno has been dubbed America's best doctor, by Forbes. But despite garnering the celebrity endorsements of Howard Stern and Bernie Sanders, his "mind-body" approach to solving chronic pain has drawn skepticism from the medical establishment.

Now a new documentary, All the Rage (2016), aims to validate his methods.

"Most physicians in the western world are not knowledgeable about psychosomatic illness and do not know what to do about it," Sarno explained in his 2006 book, The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mind-body Disorders.

"Sometimes they will tell the patient that it is all in the mind and may refer them to a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, which makes them angry because they feel that their doctor has not been really listening to them," he added. "Their pain may originate in the mind or psychic pain might greatly exacerbate the pain of a physical disorder. But in any case, it is not all in the mind. It is in the mind-brain-body. It is psychosomatic."

When people come to me for holistic health advice, my main objective is to provide evidence-based health information supported by the scientific literature. One of the quintessential pillars of my mission is to share those practices with empirical validation in order to elevate therapeutic nutrition to the same perceived mainstream legitimacy as any other science-based discipline.

Oftentimes, however, people thank me and say that they will see what their primary care physician, or worse yet, their specialist, has to say about it. Although I always advocate that you run any intervention or modality past a licensed physician for contraindications and medical advice, I can't help but flat-out cringe when they tell me they will solicit natural health advice from their allopathic doctor, due to the shortcomings of biomedical education in true lifestyle- and diet-based preventative medicine.

The World Health Organization said Friday 116 million children are to receive polio vaccines in 13 countries in west and central Africa as part of efforts to eradicate the disease on the continent.

"The synchronised vaccination campaign, one of the largest of its kind ever implemented in Africa, is part of urgent measures to permanently stop polio on the continent," the WHO said.

The programme will see all children under the age of five in 13 countries immunised from Saturday "in a coordinated effort to raise childhood immunity to polio," it added.

The countries are Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

"Take a child who wants to invent something out of thin air, and instead of saying no, tell him he has a problem with his brain, and then stand back and watch what happens. In particular, watch what happens when you give him a toxic drug to fix his brain. You have to be a certain kind of person to do that to a child. You have to be, for various reasons, crazy and a career criminal." (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

First, here are a few facts that should give you pause:

According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), "More than 25 percent of college students have been diagnosed or treated by a professional for a mental health condition within the past year."

NAMI: "One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 have [we claim] a diagnosable mental illness."

According to healthline.com, 6.4 million American children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. The average age for the child's diagnosis is 7.

BMJ 2016;352:i1457: "The number of UK children and adolescents treated with antidepressants rose by over 50% from 2005 to 2012, a study of five Western countries published in European Neuropsychopharmacology has found."

Getting the picture?

A peer-reviewed study recently published in the Review of Industrial Organization examines whether removing the right to sue ("delitigation") affects product safety. The findings highlight the importance of litigation in maintaining vaccine safety.

The study, "Is 'delitigation' associated with a change in product safety? The case of vaccines", by economist Dr. Gayle DeLong at Baruch College in New York, compares vaccines licensed before the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986 with vaccines licensed after the legislation. Results suggest that vaccine safety deteriorated after consumers were no longer able to sue vaccine makers.

The study examines adverse events (AE) per 100,000 vaccine recipients and finds the AE ratio increased from 21.0 for vaccines licensed before 1986 to 30.8 for vaccines licensed after the legislation. Further investigation reveals that the legislation is associated with an increase of between 9.4 and 12.8 injuries per 100,000 vaccine recipients (see Table 5 below). Serious AEs such as long-term disability or death also increased by about one per 100,000 vaccine recipients.

Over the 40 plus years that I was a family practitioner and teacher (the English word "doctor" derives from the Latin verb docere [do-ke-re] which means "to teach"), I have tried to fulfill what I have regarded as my solemn professional duty to warn my patients (and anybody else who would listen) about the multitude of deceptions and myths that all-too-often come from for-profit sociopathic pharmaceutical corporations (and their hangers-on). Those pesky entities never seem to give up trying to get patients (and us doctors as well) to desperately want to have the next blockbuster drug or vaccine, no matter what the fine print warnings say. Sadly, those always toxic synthetic substances invariably enriches the corporation more than it helps the duped patient.

Most of the time I was able to take the time to resist the temptation to blindly prescribe whatever treatment my patient saw on TV the night before, but it did take time. As I have often proclaimed in this column, it only takes two minutes to write a prescription, whereas it takes 20 minutes to not write one (a bunch of teaching and some arguing is required). But when time is money and medicine is a for-profit venture, one can predict what the average clinic administrator (and too many physicians) will choose to do. And therein lies one of the biggest problems in the for-profit medical (non-) system in America.

Poliovirus is a relatively harmless virus. Most people would be surprised at that statement. But it's true. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 95 percent of the people who are infected with polio display no symptoms. About four to eight percent of those infected display "minor symptoms, such as fever, fatigue, nausea, headache, flu-like symptoms, stiffness in the neck and back, and pain in the limbs, which often resolve completely."¹

Less than one percent of those who have poliovirus will develop permanent paralysis, and of those few cases less than 10 percent of them will result in death.¹ Most people who contract poliovirus never know they have the virus and they are unaffected by it. Yet, the virus has been made out to be a monster that must be subdued at all cost.

The media, along with many within the scientific, medical and public health communities, have irresponsibly pushed the idea that a virus is like a terrorist—something threatening that we must attack and destroy before it attacks and kills us. The same thoroughly unscientific mentality has been disseminated widely with regard to bacteria, disease, and fever.²